C1 The Wicked Moon

I was a fast runner—faster than most—but I never could escape the moon.

It crept on me most nights, watching my every move and grinning at me with its wily, crescent smile. It was never around to watch me frolic the grass in the garden, or paint on the balcony, or dance in the low tide of the cove that laced the edges of the Southern Peninsula—our peninsula. The one my father ruled with an iron fist. The one that was meant to be mine. No, the moon never saw those things, but it watched me run every night. Through the forest trail I'd made over the years, up to the silver tower that rested on the peninsula's edge.

I ran barefoot, shoes carried daintily on the tips of my fingers. Twigs jabbed the pads of my feet and my heels slipped on moss and slimy things, but I ran, burning and desperate. Mud slapped against my calves, wet and sticky on the train of my dress. Mother would kill me for ruining another dress, but I'd bury the evidence until a braver day.

I wasn't meant to be out late at night, but the flowers that bloomed near the cove after sunset made for the loveliest pigment of orange. It wasn't a thing you could buy in a shop and no paint dried the way natural pigments did. I could finally paint the perfect sunrise.

As I reached home, I slung the leather satchel that held my precious flowers slanted across my chest, and climbed the lattice toward my bedroom window. It was alive with light and the faintest shifting shadows, but they were likely Daniel. It was nearly the hour of night when he ran my bath for me, and he was always very astute with his timing.

My toes slipped on a piece of rotting wood, but I clawed for the wooden sill of my window and found footing again. There was no one inside but flickering candlelight, and the fainted glow of my television screen, just as I'd left it. I heaved the glass up and tumbled inside, wet dress slapping on the granite floor. The scent of bath soap caught my breath and I clapped both hands together in prayer. Thank you, Daniel.

Footsteps echoed distantly from the hallway. The sound was distinct—discernible. Someone was climbing the stairs.

I crawled quickly to the bathroom, tossing my flower satchel aside and shedding my dress and shoes before kicking them until they vanished below the claw-foot bathtub. Then I stumbled into the bubbles with a plop, water spilling over the edges and wetting my floor in suds.

The footsteps grew nearer, so I sunk low in the bubbles and pretended to wash, scrubbing my arm with the cloth Daniel had provided. It was beyond my father's men to enter my room without knocking, so when the door swung inward and a man stepped in, I gave an audible gasp and covered up the naked bits of me.

Daniel's keen smirk appeared in the light of the bathroom, a towel in his arms. "You are a glutton for punishment, Korina Rosenthal. What was it this time? Berries? Algae? Tree sap?"

I sunk back in my bath with a breath of relief. Any other man would've been drowned in the cove for walking in on the duke's daughter, but Daniel was different. Women didn't appeal to him quite like men did. He said once that we were more like art: lovely to look at, but wrong to touch. "You can't make paint with algae and tree sap, Daniel. Berries, though..."

"Don't get any ideas," Daniel said, detecting my sudden temptation. He took a gentle seat on the edge of the bath and reached for my cloth, using it to wipe at my cheek. "You missed some mud here. You're very lucky your mother didn't come in to say goodnight at her usual time. Though, I wonder why."

"It's Mother," I said, picking a twig from my hair. "Her mind is everywhere nowadays."

Daniel brushed a bit of golden hair from his eyes. I was always envious of his hair—the color of sunrise. Just like my night flowers. "My mind would be everywhere too, with a heathen for a daughter. Just wait until your wolf awakens," he said. "I have a feeling she's a troublemaker, too."

I sunk a little deeper into the bubbles. My wolf should've awoken years ago, when Daniel's did. On the week of the specter moon—a time every year when the moon neared the earth so largely, it seemed like you could reach out and pluck it from the sky. Every wolf had turned by the time the specter moon grew full. Every wolf but me.

A knock at my bedroom door. "My lady," said the voice on the other end. "Your father wishes to see you." My father. I was instantly wrung with anxiety. To deal with my mother was like a warm hug and sun on your face, but to deal with my father.... Goddess, I really didn't want to deal with my father.

Daniel helped me wash quickly, then I climbed from the tub and into the towel he held, dressed quickly into some pajamas, and rushed from my room and down the winding iron staircase. Daniel scuttled along curiously behind me—because to be called out of my room by my father was unusual. And it almost never meant anything good.

As we reached the bottom, their voices grew louder. My mother and father speaking in rushed, low tones. I held a hand to stop Daniel from coming closer. It was not a servant's place to snoop on the Alpha and Luna of the Silver Moon Pack.

"Let me come," he urged. "I'm worried for you."

"Stay put. I don't want my best friend imprisoned," I returned. Or worse. Daniel was an omega, after all. He was a servant here—fed, and cared for, and respected, but he would always be an omega. Most were sold into slavery, traded like barter. The omega life had no value beyond servitude. Certainly not to an alpha like my father.

But Daniel followed anyway, hesitantly behind me as I crept toward the bedroom where my parents spoke. Maybe they were whispering of my birthday. How large the party would be—what cake we would have or how many men to send out looking for a stag to eat. As I neared the door, I raised my hand to knock but paused when I noticed it was already open a crack. The light from the hearth pulsed through the wood, and I heard my father's gravelly voice.

"She's too weak."

He's talking about me.

I pushed the door open a little wider. They sat on matching chairs before the hearth, my father's red hair aglow in the light of the flames. My mother's brown curls poured over the back of her seat. "She'll grow stronger, Jarl. She's only a pup."

"We do not have the luxury of waiting. She's run out of time, Tatiana."

I knew my mother well. She wanted to disagree, but she couldn't. The sheer intimidation of my father did not stop short of his delicate wife.

"I'm sure we can find someone to help," Mother began, "I'm sure there's a way—"

"There is no way, Lindsey." My father turned to her, his features strong and sharp, his nose arched, his brow projected above two narrow, ocean-colored eyes. "Time has come that I withdraw my reign and pass my throne to the next heir."

"And she is your heir," Mother said. "To lead our pack as Alpha is her birthright."

"An alpha? Tatiana, she's hardly a wolf!" I flinched at the anger in his voice. Mother flinched as well. He realized it and softened his tone, rising from his chair to gaze into the belly of the fire. "Tensions are rising with the North. Now is not the time to display weakness. We're in desperate need of a strong leader and we have no other option. She did not find her wolf before her eighteenth birthday, as every other alpha before her has done, so she's to be married off to someone worthy of my throne."

My stomach fell and my face grew hot and prickly. It wasn't fair; I wasn't meant to be married off as another Alpha's Luna. I was a wolf of prestige, not a simple bride. I turned to Daniel who gazed back with the same fearful expression.

"Marry her off?" Mother was exclaiming. She rose, too—only the hearth's steady glow standing between them. "And who exactly do you plan to marry our daughter off to, Jarl?"

He gestured to someone—someone I couldn't see. A third person who had been in the room with them all along. He stepped into view and I made out his narrow nose, his broad face, a neck full of muscle that tilted just slightly toward the door, as if he knew I was there. He was dressed in the uniform of my father's men—a long black jacket and leather straps that crossed his chest to hold various weapons. I knew that face—I'd seen him around the castle before. He was a man of war. I could nearly smell the blood on his hands.

"His name is Cato Kritchley—my commander-in-chief," my father said. I looked to the man, his expression unchanged. Scars marred his scruffy beard, his left eye, his muscled neck. "He's an honorable fighter who has led my men into battle since he was a boy himself. From now forward, they will engage and pretend they're bound by the gods. The peninsula will know Korina's found her mate. The kingdom will know my reign has come to an end, and in the coming months, they will begin to strengthen our territory as husband and wife."

A cold chill bit down into my bones like icy teeth.

"Jarl," my mother protested, "he's twice her age!"

"And I was twice yours when we married," Father said. "She'll come to know love, or she won't. What matters is that our kingdom is safe."

My tears had turned to acid. I swallowed them down, a fire raging in my belly. When I turned to Daniel, he stood there as well, his hands clasped over his mouth in shock.

I had listened to my father all my life. I'd done everything he said. The royal highness of the Southern Peninsula. The stone-fisted ruler who would sell his own daughter to a filthy war-wolf to keep control of his throne.

Tears rolled down my eyes, turning Daniel to blurry shapes in the darkness of the candle sconces. I ran past him blindly, climbing the iron staircase with only the flickering candles on the walls to guide me. I would not be the bride to a brute. I would not marry a monster who led men to their death for the sake of honoring my father's name.

I would find my wolf and my mate and return for my throne, or I would not return at all.

"Kori, wait!" Daniel called as I gathered my flower satchel and wrenched over my bedroom window. I gave him one last somber look and climbed out and down the vine-covered lattice.

The moon waited for me in the sky with his brilliant, wicked smile. I ran to him, faster than I'd ever run before.